Who's Cedric?
by Silver Hunteress
Summary: Who’s Cedric? Your boyfriend? Dudley didn’t realize how much Harry wished that had been true… I know it's been done but I couldn't help myself. Rating to be safe. It's family and drama too I guess


Who's Cedric?

By: Silver Hunteress

A/N: I know it's been done before but I've been re-reading the series for the umpteenth time and had the thought of Harry answering Dudley's question with 'I wish'.

Warnings: One-sided slash Harry Potter/Cedric Diggory post-character death

Summary: Who's Cedric? Your boyfriend? Dudley didn't realize how much Harry wished that had been true…

* * *

Cedric's face had stuck in Harry's mind ever since Wood had pointed him out in the hallway. This wasn't a bad thing, as it was a very handsome face; however it was rather… unfortunate.

Particularly unfortunate when one of your friends keeps insisting that Diggory is just an idiotic pretty boy, while the other defends the fifth year's intelligence and all you can think to add is 'Well, Ron's at least half right, 'cause he is very pretty'.

He thanked God that he'd had the sense to keep that opinion to himself.

It was also rather unfortunate when the Hufflepuff prefect's face kept appearing in his dreams, as it so happened that Harry was prone to mumbling in his sleep.

Luckily Ron thought 'Gerroff Diggory', meant a close fight for the Snitch rather than… something far more intimate.

It didn't help when Harry got a much closer look at Cedric at the Quidditch match; despite the rain, Harry still thought the older boy looked quite handsome. Particularly his eyes, his eyes were the same stormy gray that had been looming ominously overhead for the past week.

It was a very nice gray, Harry had thought later in a lull between visitors after his fall and the subsequent death of his Nimbus, not for the sky, of course, but it looked quite nice surrounding Cedric's pupils.

All the same Harry still remained quite a bit more cheerful on normally considered gloomy overcast days. After all, chances to stare deep into Diggory's eyes were rare; looking up at the sky, under the pretext of searching for a break in the cloud cover, was perfectly normal.

During fourth year Harry had hoped to play against Cedric again, more to prove that he normally did not fall off his broom and hopefully raise the boy's opinion of him than anything else. Although, a chance to stare down the other Seeker would coincide quite nicely with the Gryffindor's efforts to look at Cedric's eyes some more.

A bit disappointed about the Triwizard Tournament interfering with those plans, Harry would be far from displeased if Cedric became Hogwarts champion, he would be able to fashion multiple excuses to congratulate him and wish him good luck with the tasks and with conversation came eye contact. Not to mention the entire school would be watching Diggory, so Harry's ogling would not need to be nearly as discrete.

But…

Competing against him in it?

Honestly? Harry would have thought he stood absolutely no chance at all against him. But it was wonderful being able to speak with him, even with the guise of being merely competitors (though, in fairness, to everyone else in the world, including Cedric, that's all they were).

Cho Chang was a very pretty girl, even Harry could admit that, and since asking Cedric to the Yule Ball was obviously out of the question Cho would be Harry's next choice. But when she told him who had already asked…

"Oh—Cedric. Cedric Diggory!"

He couldn't really BLAME her. After all, he would have done the exact same thing. But still, he felt a little pang in his chest when he saw them that night fortunately everyone, even Hermione, assumed that he was looking at the Ravenclaw girl wishing he was with her rather than wishing he was in her place.

But then, the maze. Harry really wasn't trying to be noble; in his eyes, Cedric DID deserve the cup. He'd won fair and square, he was the one really chosen so he deserved the victory. But no, Cedric was so sweetly fair; the only thing that made sense to HIM was Harry winning or the compromise that had been suggested.

And, oh, having the strong sixth year supporting him was almost more than Harry had ever hoped! It was almost worth being dropped by that giant spider simply because he had a temporary place in Cedric's arms.

Of course the graveyard changed all that.

Because the next chance that he'd gotten to look into Cedric's eyes they were blank, reflective shells of what they once were, glassy and lifeless. And it was horrible to see that blank look, not only in his eyes but upon the older boy's face as well; it seemed an insult to his intelligence to even look at him as he lay like that.

There was no hope for Harry's idle fantasies that Cedric would corner him after Gryffindor's next triumph over Hufflepuff, not sore about losing, of course, but wanting to admit that he'd been thinking about Harry just as much as Harry had thought of him. Or that he would receive an anonymous note requesting a midnight rendezvous at the top of the Astronomy Tower only to be pulled into the prefect's arms and snogged senseless. Or maybe a bumbling confession after being pulled into an empty classroom during break and that Cedric understood if Harry didn't feel the same, or was even disgusted, and that he knew they were three years apart and that was a bit discouraging but he just couldn't leave his feelings unvoiced, but then Harry would stop Cedric from further embarrassing himself by a gentle kiss on the lips which would then turn into a full-fledged snog-fest.

Even worse, Harry had brought Cedric here, to the place he would die. He hadn't wanted that; he'd wanted to give the boy he loved what he'd wanted. Cedric had wanted to win, Cedric deserved to win, Harry wanted him to win, a draw, and now Cedric dead.

Dead without knowing that Harry had, somewhere along the line, fallen head over heels for him.

"_Who's Cedric – your boyfriend?" _That was what Dudley had asked.

And somewhere in the split second between the question and Harry's response, he'd had the crazy urge to just say it. To just say what he'd been longing to say for far too long already. It didn't matter that Dudley would make fun of him (he did that already after all); it didn't matter that Dudley wouldn't understand what it meant that a man named Wormtail had been ordered by a man named Lord Voldemort to kill a boy named Cedric Diggory; because then someone would KNOW that the man who betrayed his parents had killed the boy he'd fallen in love with and never told.

Someone else would share that, what was that like? Sharing a burden? _Must be nice,_ Harry thought that night lying in bed. He'd been in a foul mood all evening, even snapping at Hedwig, but now he was more contemplative. What WOULD that be like? To have someone else know about the weight that had settled into his heart? Maybe he could tell Ron and Hermione.

No, they'd be dreadfully sympathetic and would probably say things that could have happened but it's a shame they won't. Harry was feeling that he'd done enough of that on his own.

But Dudley…

Jaw set and mind made up, Harry rose from his bed as quietly as he could, left his wand on the bedside table -no need for the Dursely's to think he was trying to hex their son in his sleep after all- and crept to his bedroom door. Thankful that the hinges didn't creak, the boy softly but swiftly made his way down to his cousin's bedroom door to find it open and the enormous teenager snoring uproariously in bed.

Rolling his eyes a bit, Harry ceased creeping in the hopes of giving Dudley advanced warning of his presence; he strode to the foot of the bed and waited a moment for his cousin to awaken. A particularly loud snore drove the young wizard instead to kick the bed a bit (shocked that it jostled as much as it did) and hiss, "Dudley, wake up."

"Ozzat?" Dudley's fat blonde head barely rose from its pillow, but the boy was at least partially conscious.

"Me," he answered, then thought for a bit and added, "Harry."

Shockingly, rather than bolt awake and scream for his parents that Harry'd been trying to jinx him, Dudley just nodded and said, "Oh…"

"You know that question you asked me earlier?" Dudley just gave him a bleary-eyed look. "About Cedric?" he prompted.

"M'yeah…" Dudley mumbled.

"Well, I wish he had been."

"Eh?" apparently this did not compute with a sleep fogged brain.

"Just go back to sleep Dudley," Harry told him as he began to creep back to his room. He distinctly heard a mumbled, "…m…kay…" before the snores returned.

Lying back in his own bed, Harry rather thought that Dudley would not even remember their midnight conversation, or if he did he would dismiss it as a rather peculiar dream, but that didn't matter, because Dudley had gotten his answer and Harry had lifted a great deal of weight from his heart.

He drifted off to sleep smiling at the thought that one more inhabitant of Number Four Privet Drive had the faintest inkling of who Cedric Diggory had been.


End file.
